


Let the Lantern Burn Low

by annaslastdalliance



Series: That terrible gaslighting AU [2]
Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Bleak AUs, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gaslighting, I cannot warn people away from it enough, Literally this is 'staying with your abuser: the fic series', Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaslastdalliance/pseuds/annaslastdalliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hans hasn’t let her touch him like this since the anniversary of Elsa’s death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Lantern Burn Low

**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-post of a drabble that was previously chapter 2 of _Anything That May Delay You_! Splitting them out as this messy AU is turning into a horrible, self-indulgent series. Help.

Hans hasn’t let her touch him like this since the anniversary of Elsa’s death.

But then, Hans doesn’t usually fall asleep like this either: slumped over his writing desk mid-letter, the nib of his quill pen blotting ink into the creases of his fingers. Before all this, back when Anna was still being held underwater, the sight would have worried her; now she feels strangely numb to it, and comes towards him to wake him mostly out of habit.

Hans has left the oil lamp burning, and with the curtains not yet drawn, the room is still in half-dark, the lamplight casting long, moving shadows over the angles of his face. Somehow, they seem to soften his features: he looks younger, more peaceful; his face duskier but not flushed the way it sometimes is, when he’s angry or excited. Even his freckles seem less vivid; at the very least they catch her eye less, suddenly more auburn than copper. Without meaning to, she reaches a hand to brush them, and stops just in time, remembering herself.

It doesn’t repulse her–touching him. She has done it too often and too intimately to be able to rewire the instinct in her that yearns for it; the one that he had carefully cultivated through those months of ice baths after which Hans’s warm arms had always been comforting.

No, it doesn’t repulse her–but it does repulse _him_.

“Hans…”

Anna keeps her voice low, wanting to test him more than wake him, and she’s gratified, if surprised, when he doesn’t stir at her voice. It’s unlike him to sleep so heavily, but then, Anna’s never known him to not make it to his bedroom before, either. After a moment’s consideration, she shifts a pile of his letters over and perches carefully on the table beside him.

From this angle, his hair looks golden, and unusually untidy, slanting sideways over his forehead in an buoyant tuft. The sight is slightly comical, and it prompts Anna to brush her fingers lightly through his newly-formed fringe, enjoying the way it resists any smoothing. She’s never seen him looking so flawed, and so human with it. She knows he would hate it. 

“Anna?”

Anna shocks upright, withdrawing her hand so quickly that she nearly overturns one of Hans’s bottles of ink. Fear swells in her, instinctively, and she tries to clamp it down as she steadies the ink bottle, watching Hans askance.

“How long have you been awake?”

She tries to keep her voice normal, steady, instinctively back to play-acting: the concerned wife, accidentally waking her exhausted husband. She doesn’t know if she succeeds, but Hans doesn’t lift his head, and she suddenly notices that although his eyes are open, they’re unfocused, half-lidded.

“How long have I been asleep?”

Logically, Anna knows it is Hans speaking; intuitively, for a moment, she doubts it. His voice lacks any of its usually richness, strangely soft and listless. She looks down at him, brow furrowing, and the terror inside her ebbs, replaced by a strange, inexplicable ache. It should feel good, to see him like this: weak, and disoriented; mired in the fog he had fought so hard to keep her in.

It doesn’t.

“Clearly not long enough,” she says, eventually. “Why don’t you get a few more hours?”

Hans doesn’t answer immediately, clearly still half-asleep, and after a moment of waiting Anna lifts her hand gently back to his hair. She leaves it there for a moment, unmoving, on the edge of his brow, to give him time to protest. Lately, he has met her attempts to touch him with suspicion; as though they hadn’t shared a bed for a year; as Anna hadn’t already known, for at least a month of that year, that she’d been sharing it with her sister’s murderer.

Outside, it’s just started raining, and she turns her ear to the sound, waiting.

“What time is it?”

Anna looks back towards him. His eyes are closed again now, his breathing evening.

“The sun’s only barely up,” she says, softly, dodging the question. “Go back to sleep.”

“Can’t. Have meetings.”

“You always have meetings.”

It’s the wrong choice of words. She has said this to him before, playful, a lifetime ago, and for a moment the dissonance is overwhelming. Instinctively, Anna runs her hand through his hair again, and then again, as she waits for it to pass, the texture somehow steadying. When she feels calm enough again she pauses at the base to massage briefly at his nape, the familiar warmth of skin. She used to curl up just there, she remembers, and wake up with her lips pressed against it.

“Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when you need to be up.”

“I…”

Whatever his latest protest, it fades on his lips as Anna tugs her fingers gently through his hair once more from crown to nape, catching slightly at the tangle she’s made with all her stroking. It must sting a little, but it doesn’t stir him; if anything, he looks more peaceful.

“That’s right,” she tells him, gently. “Stop worrying. I’ll wake you.”

Hans makes a sound that could be agreement or demurral; something hummed low in the back of his throat. His lips are slightly parted, the lines that had formed on his brow since waking slowly uncluttering. He is falling back to sleep, despite himself, breathing evening out to the stroke of her fingers, and it is not a moment too soon.

Outside, the rainfall has come with the morning, and daylight is filtering in softly through the curtains of the study. Anna curls a lock of Hans’s hair loosely around her fingers, a sigh extracting itself from her lips. She knows she is only delaying the moment. He will be awake again before long, and this easy intimacy between them will be gone.

It isn’t that Anna minds the fighting. There is too much hatred in her still for pacifism, and she suspects there always will be. But lately, Hans’s retaliation has been distance, and it hurts worse than all the ice baths in the kingdom. For all their cruelty, they had also been intimacies; articulations of mattering, of a devotion to the _idea_ of her, the _idea_ of them. After everything he has done to her, after everything they have pretended to be, Anna is his now, and it can no more be undone than Elsa returned to the living.

But Hans keeps trying, and so he will wake up soon, and pretend that love is not his name in her head, and her’s in his.

He will wake up soon, but not yet.


End file.
